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Chicano Liberation Front

Chicano Liberation Front
LeadersUnknown
Dates of operation1970–1974
SizeUnknown
Part ofChicano Movement
OpponentsLocal law enforcement, capitalists

The Chicano Liberation Front (CLF) was an underground revolutionary group in California, United States, that committed dozens of bombings and arson attacks in the Los Angeles area in the early 1970s.[1][2] The radical militant group publicly claimed responsibility for 28 bombings between March 1970 and July 1971 in a taped message sent to the Los Angeles Free Press.[3] Their targets were typically banks, schools and supermarkets.[3] They also claimed responsibility for a bomb at Los Angeles City Hall.[4] The Chicano Liberation Front was also more than likely responsible for explosions at a downtown federal building[5][6] and at the Los Angeles Hall of Justice,[7] although those incidents remain officially unsolved.

No one has ever publicly identified themselves as being a member of the Chicano Liberation Front.[4] The closest law enforcement ever got to the CLF appears to have been a 19-year-old named Freddie De Larosa Plank, who was charged for an attempted arson at a high school,[8] and for firebombing a U.S. Army Reserve building.[9] The CLF claimed responsibility for the latter event in August 1971.[9] The 1970s leftist radical bombings were generally difficult crimes to solve,[10] and the CLF was apparently extremely cautious, close-knit, and ideologically sincere enough,[11] that they avoided the catastrophic collapses of other paramilitaries of the era.[12]

A 1975 Time magazine article reported that CLF was thought to have "at least 15 hardcore members."[13] One history of American terrorism said it was typical of "small groups of revolutionaries" like the Chicano Liberation Front to give themselves grandiose names in order to project strength, even when their actual membership count was likely closer to that of a squad than an army.[14] The CLF apparently had at least one female member, as a woman called in claims of responsibility for two bombings, and the voice on the 1971 recording sent to the Free Press was female.[9]

Part of the larger Chicano/Latino racial-progress action, the group apparently sought "removal of police and other 'outside exploiters' from East Los Angeles"[3] by use of revolutionary violence, in response to law-enforcement actions like the killing of the Sanchez cousins and the perceived suppression of Mexican-American political agitation (e.g., the August 29, 1970 LASD killing of reporter Ruben Salazar).[2][15] The "sectarian Marxist" orientation of CLF opposed the relatively more genteel activism of the Chicano Moratorium.[16] The Chicano Liberation Front shared some ideological similarities with the Black Power Movement and American Indian Movement organizations of the same era,[17] namely their vocal resistance to police brutality in the United States and their opposition to capitalist exploitation of the poor. Their use of "revolutionary" violence also placed them within a class of chaotic leftist entities that included the Weather Underground, the Symbionese Liberation Army, the New World Liberation Front, the Emiliano Zapata Unit, and the George Jackson Brigade. Some of the later actions claimed by or attributed to the Chicano Liberation Front may have been the acts of hardened criminals (as was apparently the case with the assassination of William Cann),[18] the Symbionese Liberation Army,[19] the New World Liberation Front,[12] or mildly rebellious teenagers.[20][21] The Chicano Movement, as a whole, was non-violent and modeled on the civil rights movement led by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.[4] Chicano Liberation Front terrorism was said to be the "exception that proved the rule."[22]

  1. ^ Miller, Erin (May 15, 2019), "Ideological Motivations of Terrorism in the United States, 1970—2018" (PDF), Advanced Development for Security Applications (ADSA) Workshop 20, National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism An Emeritus Center of Excellence of the U.S. Department of Homeland
  2. ^ a b Escobar, E. J. (June 1, 2015). "The Unintended Consequences of the Carceral State: Chicana/o Political Mobilization in Post-World War II America". Journal of American History. 102 (1): 174–184. doi:10.1093/jahist/jav312. ISSN 0021-8723. Retrieved 2023-05-01.
  3. ^ a b c Navarro, Armando (2005). Mexicano Political Experience in Occupied Aztlan: Struggles and Change. Rowman Altamira. pp. 384–385. ISBN 978-0-7591-0567-6. Retrieved 2023-05-01 – via Google Books.
  4. ^ a b c Rosales, Francisco Arturo (January 1, 2006). Dictionary of Latino Civil Rights History. Arte Publico Press. p. 84. ISBN 978-1-61192-039-0. Retrieved 2023-05-01 – via Google Books.
  5. ^ Hewitt, Christopher (2005). Political Violence and Terrorism in Modern America: A Chronology. Greenwood Publishing Group. p. 76. ISBN 978-0-313-33418-4 – via Google Books.
  6. ^ Rosales, Francisco Arturo (January 1, 2006). Dictionary of Latino Civil Rights History. Arte Publico Press. p. 84. ISBN 978-1-61192-039-0. Retrieved 2023-05-01 – via Google Books.
  7. ^ Cite error: The named reference :26 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  8. ^ "Youth is booked". Daily News-Post. Monrovia, Calif. April 27, 1970. p. 2. Archived from the original on 2023-04-30. Retrieved 2023-04-30 – via Newspapers.com.
  9. ^ a b c Houston, Paul; Rodriguez, Frank (August 14, 1971). "'Front' Sends Tape to Underground Paper; Chicanos Claim They Bombed 28 Buildings". Part II. Los Angeles Times. pp. 1, 10. Archived from the original on 2023-05-03. Retrieved 2023-05-01 – via Newspapers.com.
  10. ^ Cite error: The named reference APmilitant19712 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  11. ^ Valadez, John (2013). "CSRC ORAL HISTORIES SERIES: John Valadez, interview with Karen Mary Davalos, November 19 and 21, and December 3, 7, and 12, 2007" (PDF) (Interview). No. 10. Interviewed by Karen Mary Davalos. Los Angeles: UCLA Chicano Studies Research Center. Archived (PDF) from the original on 2018-12-17. Retrieved 2023-04-25.
  12. ^ a b Burrough, Bryan (2015). Days of Rage: America's Radical Underground, the FBI, and the First Age of Terror. New York, New York: Penguin Press. pp. 354–360 (NWLF). ISBN 978-0-698-17007-0. OCLC 906028786.
  13. ^ Raigoza, James José (1977). The Ad Hoc Committee to Incorporate East Los Angeles: A Study on the Socio-political Orientations of Mexican American Incorporation Advocates. University of California, Los Angeles. p. 95. Archived from the original on 2023-05-13. Retrieved 2023-05-01.
  14. ^ Stohl, Michael (2020). The Politics of Terrorism (3rd ed.). CRC Press. ISBN 978-1-000-14704-9. Retrieved 2023-05-01 – via Google Books.
  15. ^ Escobar, Edward J. (March 1993). "The Dialectics of Repression: The Los Angeles Police Department and the Chicano Movement, 1968–1971". The Journal of American History. 79 (4): 1483–1514. doi:10.2307/2080213. JSTOR 2080213. Retrieved 2023-05-01.
  16. ^ Navarro, Armando (January 8, 2015). Mexicano and Latino Politics and the Quest for Self-Determination: What Needs to Be Done. Lexington Books. p. 67. ISBN 978-0-7391-9736-3. Retrieved 2023-05-01 – via Google Books.
  17. ^ Jensen, Richard J.; Hammerback, John C. (December 1980). "Radical nationalism among Chicanos: The rhetoric of José Angel Gutiérrez". Western Journal of Speech Communication. 44 (3): 191–202. doi:10.1080/10570318009374005. ISSN 0193-6700. Retrieved 2023-05-01.
  18. ^ Swenson, Timothy (2004). Assassination in Decoto: The Shooting of Union City Police Chief William Cann. Fremont, CA. ISBN 1-889064-10-6. OCLC 915140378.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
  19. ^ "SLA operations under a series of 'aliases'?". Berkeley Gazette. Berkeley, Calif. October 2, 1975. p. 7. Archived from the original on 2023-05-01. Retrieved 2023-05-01 – via Newspapers.com.
  20. ^ Lewinnek, Elaine; Arellano, Gustavo; Dang, Thuy Vo (January 27, 2022). "A People's Guide to Orange County". Boom California. Archived from the original on 2023-04-30. Retrieved 2023-04-30.
  21. ^ Cite error: The named reference :29 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  22. ^ Ontiveros, Randy J. (2014). In the Spirit of a New People: The Cultural Politics of the Chicano Movement. NYU Press. pp. 56–57. ISBN 978-0-8147-3877-1. Retrieved 2023-05-01 – via Google Books.

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